As part of major investments being made at Getrag Ford Transmissions’ Halewood plant, near Liverpool, England, Interroll recently installed a dynamic storage system to centralise and store palletised parts closer to production lines.
Getrag Ford Transmissions is currently pursuing a lean logistics project to centralise logistics operations within the plant, and the Interroll Pallet Flow system offers first-in, first-out storage for 228 pallet positions in rack structure, four pallets deep and three pallets high, with 19 lanes.
The system allows accurate stock rotation of parts, and ensures the first deliveries are used first, so parts are not superseded, and stock is not redundant or written off. Fork-lift truck movements are also reduced, as the racking is confined within clearly market areas of operation. The Getrag logistics team has described the Interroll system as “a positive development.”
Neil Hodgkinson, contract manufacturing engineer at Getrag Ford Transmission said, “The new Interroll Pallet Flow system has been located closer to our production area and has provided compact, space saving cubic storage, enabling identical products to be grouped in the same lane and bays. This in turn simplifies location and order picking of parts to support production of some 1,600 to 2,000 gearboxes daily.”
Getrag Ford Transmissions was established as a joint venture with Ford Motor Company in 2001. Getrag is responsible for managing employees at six European sites and producing manual, automatic and dual clutch transmissions. The company is now the world’s largest independent supplier of transmissions and drive systems for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, working across 24 sites, with 13,250 employees.
